Midway Studios was a cherished housing enclave for artists until hopes were dashed and a military helmet firm moved in

David Rogers wrote the infamous note on Valentine’s Day. He was scrambling to leave the office at 15 Channel Center St. to take his wife to Legal Sea Foods when two artists stopped him.

The artists lived upstairs and, like many other Midway Studios residents, they were unhappy with Rogers’s plans to expand his company into the downstairs theater of the building they shared in Fort Point. The artists felt Rogers’s company, Ops-Core, which makes military helmets, shouldn’t operate at Midway, a building designed as live-in studios for artists.